Healthcare

America’s long-term care facilities are subject to rising liability costs, a new study from Aon Corp. and the American Health Care Association finds.

Combination life insurance products, which combine a pool of benefit dollars for covered long-term care expenses, a death benefit for beneficiaries, or both, showed tremendous growth in 2010, with new premium sales soaring 62% to $1.2 billion, according to LIMRA research released June 17.

Several major commercial insurers are paying claims faster, but their claims processing error rates are increasing, according to an annual report of insurer performance.

A recent survey from Principal Financial Group confirms that employees who use a financial adviser do significantly better at meeting their retirement savings goals than those who do not.

Providers of bare-bones health insurance plans have until September to seek exemption from certain coverage requirements set under the 2010 health care reform law, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Plan sponsors who forget to actually do discrimination testing run into all sorts of problems, including the possibility that their plan can be disqualified. To pass the Section 105(h) nondiscrimination rules an employer must meet two separate tests.

Enrollment in health savings accounts jumped to more than 11.4 million as of Jan. 1, 2011, according to an annual census released June 14.

The Health and Human Services Department stopped accepting ERRP applications on May 6, and announced nearly half of the $5 billion earmarked for the program had been approved for payout to employers. However, Senators John Kerry, Debbie Stabenow, Richard Blumenthal and Ben Cardin recently introduced a new measure that would infuse another the $5 billion into ERRP.

Almost 80 percent of employers anticipate that there will be an increased demand for access to savings and investment advice about their 401(k) plans, according to a new survey.

Organizations that integrate workforce and business performance data into their analytics tools are nearly three times as likely to achieve best-in-class performance results as those who don’t, says a new report on workforce analytics from Aberdeen.